by Angela D. Dillard
about Angela D. Dillard
Angela D. Dillard is Richard A. Meisler Collegiate Professor of Afroamerican & African Studies and in the Residential College at University of Michigan. She is the author of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner Now?: Multicultural Conservatism in America and Faith in the City: Preaching Radical Social Change in Detroit.
Conservatism
In common usage, the term “conservatism” names a belief that hierarchies constituting the status quo are worth preserving and protecting; that inequality is not a necessary evil but a positive good; and that the defense of individual liberty is the best bulwark against the so-called totalitarian tendencies of an egalitarian politics. One popular variation of this usage posits conservatism as a trans-historical reaction against revolution from below: the emancipation of the lower orders in France; the rebellions of slaves in the Americas; the struggles of the white working class in nineteenth-century United States; and in successive generations, the demands of women, the poor, nonwhite and racialized minorities, and people with marginalized gender identities. In short, conservatism is synonymous with power and the defense of power in ways that are enlivened by violence and war (Robin 2011). In the first couple of decades of the new millennium, this usage of the term feels consistent with the performance of conservative politics on FOX News and its articulation in publications such as Breitbart. It is also accords well with the “dark money” vision (Mayer, 2016) of the political machinations of the Koch brothers and others judged to be responsible for funding and fueling...
Conservatism
[For a limited time, read the full keyword essay on “Conservatism”](/american-cultural-studies/essay/conservatism/) Those members of the radical and racist right who led the Jan 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol building, vandalizing the Senate chambers and threatening members of Congress and the police force sworn to protect them, have altered the terms of public debates and collective understanding including, perhaps, our understanding of conservatism. As I argue in my keyword essay, since the dawn of the 19th century there have been two overarching strands of American conservatism. The first sees itself as a philosophical bulwark against disorder, viewing hierarchies and natural forms of inequality as positive goods for healthy societies. In its Burkean pretensions it views sudden change as inherently dangerous and supports, instead, reforms that are gradual and even evolutionary in nature. In this strand, conservatives are the guardians of liberty and the defenders of our constitutional _Republic_ who have histories of keeping the unruly aspects of full-fledged democracy at bay. The second strand is more sinister, chaotic, and reactionary. This is the conservatism of “dark money” political machinations of those who fund and fuel the Radical Right. It is a vision of conservatism embroiled in a “deep history” of...